Best Demarco Poems
The suicidal King and the one eyed Jack
Were perusing the bar for a late evening snack
"How's her?" asked the Jack.
"Too thin," said the King.
"I like the women...
with bottoms that swing."
"How's she?" asked the King.
"Too plump," said the Jack.
"I like the women...
with a nice tight rack."
The Queen of Hearts pulled her panties up with a snap
And shoved The Beast's craw off her god forsaken lap
Shut her eyes, held her breath and rolled out of bed
And tiptoed out the door
Without a word said,
The Beast was OK
An Ace he was not
Confused, she strolled to the bar
for a late evening shot
"You pig," cried the Queen
"Who me?" pleaded the King.
"I can't believe you have the decency
To still wear your ring."
The king looked her up and down,
sole to soul and foot to crown
He knew something was wrong,
almost RIGHT AWAY
For one, there was a smile on her face
That seemed to last ALL DAY
"You ****," cried the King
"Who me?" questioned the Red Ace
"Not you!" said both King and Queen
"How could you stand there and lie to my face
with your button half undone
and your stockings out of place?"
"How could you?" cried the King.
"You don't deserve to wear that crown
With your bra strap twisted up
And your dress falling down."
"I'm leaving," protested the Queen
And she would've I know
Except sometimes
Love waits until the last minute to show
"Wait," cried the King, but he stopped
He had decided to call her bluff
And he turned his back
Even though it was tough
Because also sometimes
Loving someone just isn't Enough.
By: Joseph DeMarco
I was running up the mountain,
Just dog tired,
Suffering,
My mind drifting
Between the Infinite Rift.
My Aumakua (spirit animal) stops on a branch nearby.
He starts to chirp a mile a minute.
I cannot understand him.
For a second I imagine his chirps as something other than sounds.
This is what the little bird might have said,
"If Friends come and go
Enemies must
Stay and stop
Or what happens
If I don't think?
Does that mean
I am not?
Could I just fizzle away
into the immaterial matter in the air?
Become one with the universe,
Dissipate like the wind
Which has a pulse and a spirit
And a really bad temper.
The wind gets really pissed
If you break its rules.
For every reaction
There is a bell that goes off in a parallel universe
And two porcupines make love very carefully
Until one of them pokes the other
In the way that poking is bad..."
I put my finger in my ear, and realize the bird is still chirping and chattering, But for some
reason I can't understand him any more. Maybe I never could.
-Joseph DeMarco
We hardly remember the truth
Victims of the Great Forgetting
We hardly recognize that history is popular culture
A screenplay of the past written by the victor
Just look at Thomas Jefferson
Author of the Declaration of Independence
With his quill scribing the words, "All men are created equal."
We hardly think of him slinking back to his slave plantation
Grabbing one of his African slave mistresses
and having his way with her
His love puppet
Of which he had a harem
My ninth grade teacher (whom had tenure)
whispered from the side of his face
The only thing Columbus discovered
Was those people he called Indians
Which we now call Native Americans
were savages in the sack
And the only thing he brought back
from the New World was syphilis
We hardly look at the big picture
which is that we are destroying ourselves
We cannot continue to keep living
the way we are living
And not expect civilization to collapse
We are so short sighted
We hardly see history repeating itself
We are Rome
And quite sadly Nixon is our Nero
Hardly a hero
It won't be long before
The clock strikes zero
By: Joseph DeMarco
We all hear the internal clock ticking,
A self-contained Doomsday device,
Melting like a candle in the desert heat
Shaded by our consciousness,
We try to ignore the Fun House mirrors
That manipulate our memory.
Our minds as flat as pancakes
Are screaming for persistence
And there's something that looks slightly like a deflated goose on the sand.
Our memories are not real
They happen to be past-tense fantasies
Reality souped-up on steroids
Hounding us like a dog
we bargain with memory
and give in to its demands
By: Joseph DeMarco
Twas the day before Summer Break
And all through the school
Not a single kid was studying
or following one single rule
The books were all stacked in the corner with care
while paper and spitballs
were airborne everywhere
The children would not listening to what teacher said
For visions of vacation
danced in their head
They'd have parties and picnics plus get to sleep in
The only downside was dealing
with their family and kin
But that was a really very small price to pay,
Just a very small sum
Because Sweet Summer Break had at long last come.
The clock ticked toward three,soon they'd be free
Half left their seats before teacher could decree,
Have a wonderful summer break
By: Joseph DeMarco
The scene is all too familiar
(Except for the purple sky),
Has this happened before?
Deja vu on the edge of a waking dream?
In another life,
Or maybe all funerals are the same?
The same ceremony.
The same casket
(Well this casket is made of Phantom-wood).
The same sadness, fear and joyousness,
from everybody that it is not
THEIR funeral.
We are all lined up
(Along the blue grass)
These familiar strangers.
They look like neighbors from past lives,
The lady next to me looks like
my 1st grade teacher
(Except she has five noses).
She doesn't seem to know me,
Why would she?
Didn't I used to deliver newspapers to that man?
(Except without the eyes in the back of his head)
Not in this life
Maybe that was lifetimes ago.
On the way in
I brushed past the doorman
(who looks like this kid I used to play hockey with,
except he is thirty years older).
But we say not a word to each other
As if we don't know each other
(or never did).
The funeral is sad and I cry,
even though I never knew the boy in the coffin
I cry because things have to end.
Why can't they be endless?
I cry cause death is heart-breaking
I cry for his family's pain.
And I am glad to go back to my world,
Where we never die and love is endless.
By: Joseph DeMarco
Confessions of a Swirly Straw
The Swirly Straw said to the Clear Cola
“I don’t mean to pry
but I’m tired of getting double teamed
Like some harlot in a trashy movie
If I wanted so many ménage a trios’
I would have wished to be a **** star
Or possibly a prostitute
And even if I were born Jenna Jameson, Francesca Le, or Kobe Tai
I would have chosen a different occupation
Yes, it’s true I was Cleopatra in a past life
And perhaps I was the infamous Jezebel also
And perhaps I enjoy the physical act of sex
A little too much
But there is something very unsettling
about my top being tongued and sucked on
while a river of sticky sweet liquid
Is shot up my bottom
twisting and turning
through my body like a shivering ******
And besides your effervescing bubbles
are tickling me in all the wrong spots
So the next time
this anonymous person puts his lips to me
make yourself scarce and get out of my way
or mark my words
you’ll pay
energy has a funny way
of coming back to you
and reimbursing the guilty
for all the things they do.”
Confessions of Clear Cola
The Clear Cola said to the Swirly Straw
“My love I know you don’t recognize me
We sometimes don’t identify everything we see
But we keep on meeting again and again
Why just last year, I was the ink and you the pen
I flow through your veins like a fish in the sea
Do you remember my love? It is I Antony
In each life we meet, and I swim inside you
Sometimes I am blood, once I was the drink Yoo-hoo
And another thing
I’m pretty sure of is
That anonymous person putting his lips to you
is Caesar from Rome
In most lifetimes he comes to devour me
Like a rabid dog with his mouth filled with foam
He is my nemesis,
My demise,
The reason I die
But one of these lives
He is going to get, an Eye for an Eye
I’ve waited thousands of years,
And if I have to,
I’ll wait more
For just one chance
To settle the score
Et tu Caesar?
Well I can’t rightly say
But I promise you Caesar
You’ll rue the day.”
By: Joseph DeMarco
Beyond the invincible Death,
Past the infectious Icons,
The ever-winding spatial staircase,
And the crack between Time and Space,
Lies the unconscious mind, the ethereal plane, and the land of the lost.
I have traveled miles to be here,
And there are miles to go before I wake.
On a vaguely familiar cracked playground,
Where weeds grow wild
Between fences, bleachers, and tents,
At the crossroads of interconnectedness
I will be meeting him,
Or
He will be meeting me.
I notice distinctly that
It is light but there is no sun in the sky.
There is something non-real, yet realer than existence, about this setting.
On top of the bleachers a small black child beckons me
Toward him.
His face reminds me of my childhood;
His smile reminds me of my long lost home;
There is something both wise and foolish about the way he smiles.
He strides back and forth across the top bleacher;
As I get closer he informs me,
“Animals are the dead coming back to communicate with us.”
Some of what he says doesn’t make sense.
“Mij saw I,” he chants.
He informs me that if ever I want to see him,
I am to come to this spot.
As I try to look at my hands,
The child drops off the back of bleachers,
Disappearing into oblivion.
-Joseph DeMarco
Black Pearls
and Broken ocean shells
Cannot stop my love for you
We are shipwrecked
on a jagged reef
A pirate's treasure of booty
with nothing to spend it on
The curse is on now
it is the dark time
and the thunder clouds
grumble and groan
The rainbow above us
is not artificial
As Dylan holds that note
like a little kid holding
onto a helium balloon
He yanks it out of the sky
like a promise
not yet fulfilled
an idea incomplete
Our folly is funny
fumbling footloose
through the pillars of time
The color and sounds
continue to fall,
run, sparkle and fade
"And what did you see my darling young one?"
Her lips are dry
her throat parched
The words wobbling in her mouth
"Were you wounded in hatred or love?" she asks.
But she already knows the not-so-simple answer
when she looks in my eyes
By: Joseph DeMarco
Confessions of Pistachio Pudding
The pudding said to the whipped cream
"I love the way you feel on top of me...
all light and sugary...but I have a confession
I was not always a bowl of Pistachio Pudding
I used to be Lancelot
And
I suspect you were once Guinevere
I suspect that maybe Dave Matthews
Was once Mozart
I suspect that writers reciprocally
create the same masterpieces over and over again
Just changing them
But leaving the same message
and thus "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," became "Satellite"
I suspect that possibly Arthur Laurents was William Shakespeare and that's why
Westside Story and Romeo and Juliet are so similar
I suspect a lot of things that animate objects would never suspect
When your inanimate you see things others can't
and so my delectable whipped cream
I suspect I have known you before
Confessions of a Blowtorch
The Blowtorch said to the Steel
“I am going to enjoy this
More than you know
Believe you me
We reap what we sow
Like bright burning fire turns wood to gray ashes
Like a Singapore criminal that gets thirteen lashes
It is now my turn
to burn into you
For three past lives
I suffered through
You were rubber
while I was glue
You were the slaughterhouse
while I cried out “Moo!”
You were the white man
And my people the Sioux
But the past is the past
We start a new
And this is my turn “to do”
what I do
Like kismet karma on a merry-go-round
The truth is false
The lost is found
I burn you steel
I feel your pain
I’ve cried your cry
I feel no shame.”
It should be ironically noted that the steel was in no way hurt or bothered by the
flame of the blow torch
Excerpt from: The Chemicals Between Us
By: Joseph DeMarco
All is written by the same hand;
Our God is the same God,
Who is everything,
Who is nothing.
Jesus and Buddha sought the same thing;
All major religions are the same
But different cultural aspects
Make descriptions that are hard to cling.
I may be crazy,
But I believe God has been trying to contact me of late;
It is all in MY cards along with our imminent fate.
God is not so special,
But there is some message
I was supposed to decode and know;
The message is occluded
Like footprints after the new fallen snow.
The message still eludes me
As the voice gets more and more clear;
The voice makes me stronger
And reminds me I have nothing to fear.
It's meandering on the edge
Of Bob Marley's One Love
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg,
The fingertips in the glove.
"One mind there is,
But under it two principals contend."
Light or dark, good or bad,
We choose to commend or offend.
You make it up as you go;
Reality is a mold of what is real;
It's all in your head;
You are mistaken what you feel.
Lao Tzu, Confucius and Elijah,
Moses, Krishna and Mohammed,
Were transistors from One Heaven,
Visionaries of what the world could be,
Interested in one main task,
setting the soul free,
As God whispers lightly in my ear,
"There is no you...there is only me."
-Joseph DeMarco
I climbed to the top of the clock tower,
With the wind lightly at my back.
I positioned myself ever so slightly,
And got ready to attack.
I brought back the bow,
And let the arrow fly.
I aimed straight for the spot in the center of the Bull's eye.
My only intent was to make him die.
I wanted to see how he would like it,
When I shot him through the heart.
I wondered if he could pull it together,
After it all fell apart.
I wanted to prove to him,
How he would react,
When the pain came on so strong,
It felt like a heart attack.
Would he wallow in misery
Longing for her scent
Getting drunken and stupid
With his mind half bent
I bet he would.
I don't think he could handle the pain,
And all the confusion
When it all goes down the drain.
Relationships are tough,
Believe me I know.
I wanted to see if he could handle it though,
I let the slings of outrageous fortune go,
And shot Cupid in the heart
With my arrow and bow.
By: Joseph DeMarco
"**** without sound
Is not nearly as good,"
The girl with the scorpion tattoo
Turns and says to me.
"Duh," I comment.
"It's as if a part of our
Brain
And sex drive
Are turned off," she tells me.
"Turned off,
Would be
The right expression," I smirk.
"I wonder," the girl ponders
"If deaf sex
Doesn't feel as good."
"That's ridiculous," I explain,
"Deaf sex would feel better...
Haven't you ever heard that
When people lose a sense,
Their other four senses
Become heightened."
She smiles, "Did you ever
See that pizza commercial?"
"The one with the family,
Where one guy has a
Big NOSE,
One guy has a
Big MOUTH,
One guy has
Big EYES,
And one guy has
Big EARS?" I ask.
"Yup," she says, "I love that commercial."
"That commercial speaks volumes about senses," I say.
"How do you mean?" she inquires.
"Well, there is a NOSE, MOUTH, EYES, EARS, but NO FEELING.
There is no part of your body that
Could be enlarged to emphasize FEELING,
Because you feel with your entire body.
FEELING is a superior sense.
It is better than the other senses.
It is the gateway into intuition and extra-sensory perception."
"Really?" the girl asks.
I can see the outline of the scorpion
Underneath the hem of her dress.
"Well, that's what I think," I tell her.
"So?" she comments.
"It's also what I FEEL."
By: Joseph DeMarco
Swarming like insects
The development is coming
gnats, mosquitoes, and ants
They are destroying all the plants
Their buzzing sound
is more like the cash register going Cha-ching
It matters NOT, where you go,
like a mold or a fungus the develop will grow
They call it progress
They call it for the better
sly as the lie that is St. Nick.
They neglect to tell you nothing grows on brick
More parking lots and strip malls,
More freeways and byways and twenty foot walls,
Where the water runs in the road,
From a cup that has seriously overflowed.
They will definitely prey on the common fear
They are going to tell you things that you want to hear,
Where the stream beds run dry,
And the old man recollects with a sigh,
I plant this seed for the children of the land
In the hopes that we wake up and understand
Stop the development, a three story mall has no worth,
When all that we need can be produced by the Earth.
By Joe DeMarco
Frightful courage
heavenly bad
pessimistic optimism
happily sad
Zen monk buddist priest
philosophic religion
pleasantly painful
colorless prism
Green colored stop sign
Oxymoron's twin
ageless bartender
with a twist of dry gin
hopefully hopeless
Paradise Found
If a tree falls in the forest
And no one's around
Does it make a sound?
By: Joseph DeMarco